MakerBot announces today the acquisition of the start-up software company Layer By Layer. Layer By Layer joined MakerBot to help create user-friendly platforms and systems that help make 3D printing technology easier and more accessible.

California-based 3D printing technology company Layer By Layer was started two years ago by Jonathan Schwartz, Max Friefeld, Graham Tremper, Dustin Kane, Becca Schwartz and Oliver Ortlieb. The startup launched Teleport It 3D, an online file-sharing platform back in March 2013. In Jun they launched layerbylayer.com, a marketplace for the buying, selling, and sharing of 3D printable products.

MakerBot believes that the team has been successful in bringing 3D printing technology to a level where there is little need for expertise to run a 3D printer or move files between 3D software and the printer. The goal of the acquisition of Layer By Layer is to help accelerate MakerBot's position in the entertainment and 3D printing management spaces, as part of its effort to build a more robust 3D ecosystem.

As part of the acquisition, Max Friefeld, Oliver Ortlieb and Jonathan Schwartz have joined MakerBot full-time and work out of the company's Brooklyn office directly with MakerBot's Digital Products, Software and Business Development groups.

One of the recent projects the Layer By Layer team has tackled is the ability for MakerBot to implement streaming technology into the MakerBot Digital Store and provide a digital rights management system for 3D printable files. The company believes its secure streaming, which was launched in October with MakerBot's Digital Store, will be a major inducement for more licensed content partners to join MakerBot and provide their intellectual property for 3D printing.

"We're excited to announce the acquisition of Layer By Layer and move forward with the projects we have been working on with the Layer By Layer team. We see this as a major step forward in being able to support not only our licensed content partners with a secure digital rights management system, but other content as well," noted Jenny Lawton, acting CEO of MakerBot. "The team has been working on several really interesting projects and we are excited to implement added features and benefits to the MakerBot 3D Ecosystem."